


Timely Manner

by Condensedcream



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Bittersweet, Carmex, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23033059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Condensedcream/pseuds/Condensedcream
Summary: Sora didn’t know what came next, only that it was coming. A dark deja vu that kept him going, told him not to lose or he’d be cold.
Relationships: Sora/Yozora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 77





	Timely Manner

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be fluffy but took a turn for the cathartic.

“If we could not do the punishment pyramid thing again, that would be great,” Sora said, electric shocks trembling through his fingers as he gripped his keyblade.

Yozora paused, quiet and thoughtful for a moment before he spoke.

“Interesting name.”

Genuine or sarcastic, Sora couldn’t tell. Yozora only had one tone. Flat, listless. Devoid of hostility.

So why was he like this?

Sora asked himself that question for the hundredth time as he dodged a burst of red, throwing himself to the ground, forced back to his feet in time to narrowly avoid a second shot. The third one singed his hair, the smell acrid as it reached his nose.

He should have been hot with exertion, but he was cold.

Cold from some sort of memory, one worked into his brain until it became a new groove that was part of him, as unknowable as a front lobe or a brain stem. He couldn’t feel any of those, but they were real and inside him.

Fear of the dark, fear of lightning that struck too close, fear of things with sharp fangs full of venom.

Instincts that ran deeper than skin, blood, and bone.

This had joined them.

Sora didn’t know what came next, only that it was coming. A dark deja vu that kept him going, told him not to lose or he’d be cold.

_Cold, cold, cold._

Sora shivered.

“Why won’t you tell me what this is about?” Sora called, wary when Yozora hadn’t tried to shoot him after an entire three seconds.

“I have,” Yozora said. His voice was half carried away by the wind that whipped around them.

“No– no, the whole saving me thing, that doesn't make sense. There has to be more to this.”

Yozora was there, gone, back again. Several yards closer now. Sora gripped his keyblade until his knuckles hurt as he took in Yozora’s suspiciously empty hands.

“I have,” Yozora restated, voice clearer than before.

Still flat, still listless. But more than that, tired. A softer shade of resigned.

Sora saw it then, written on his face. Showing in the uneasy set of his jaw, the slight furrow between his brows. The way he blinked slow and sure and never at a loss for words.

There was a groove in his brain he wasn't born with, the same as Sora.

What did it feel like? What was it made by?

“Don’t come any closer,” Sora warned, his voice wavering and warning empty. He didn’t want to hit Yozora any more than he wanted Yozora to hit him.

Yozora’s gaze skewed sideways, thoughts turned inwards. Sora watched the calculations, seemingly searching out the next thread he was supposed to follow. Maybe his groove was deeper than Sora’s.

Sora’s hummingbird heart ached as he watched the distance between them closed further, his body bypassing flight or flight as it settled directly on freeze. His keyblade shook in his hands, Yozora’s words playing back to him.

_I have._

He hadn’t.

_I have._

Had he?

Sora was starting to get hot. The same sort of awful hot he’d felt back in the keyblade graveyard before he’d come apart. It was back now, searing his insides and turning his breath into short, stupid gasps as his thoughts tore down a dark, end-of-the-world path.

He hated it. More than that he hated how Yozora was standing there, staring, doing nothing.

Sora’s anger soured into shame as he forgot how to fight, rooted in place as an open target. No wonder he wasn't a keyblade master.

“Sorry,” Sora said, choking on the word. “I think something’s wrong with me. Just, give me a sec.”

His lungs were filling with the heat, no room left for air as he began to gasp. His keyblade clattered against the ground as he dropped it, his hand coming up to pinch his nose closed as he shut his mouth. Not breathing was preferable to the ugly, frightened noises he was making.

"You're going to knock yourself out like that," Yozora said.

Sora shook his head. It spun.

Maybe he would.

Once, Riku told him these weren't normal in a good way, but normal that they happened. Even to him. It was hard to imagine. Hurt to, really. Hurt to the point Sora hadn’t asked how to live through them, which he worried he wouldn’t every time they happened.

He was regretting that now as his heart folded in on itself, his hand loosening as his body forced him to suck in shallow, reedy breaths. It made the back of his head tingle and his knees shake, this fast in and out of barely-air.

His panic boiled over as tears rolled down his face and he stopped being able to recall how breathing was supposed to work. He was cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, _hot_ cold _hot_ and unraveling at the seams, legs giving out as he collapsed in a heap.

Yozora grabbed his arms, fingers digging in through his sleeves as he slowed Sora’s fall, the impact on his knees not quite bruising. Sora couldn’t feel the groove in his brain now, his deja vu dissipating.

Yozora didn’t let go as he knelt in front of Sora. He didn’t yell or laugh, or say anything at all. Through his tears, Sora thought Yozora looked a little lost, turned inward again but finding nothing.

“Sorry,” Sora repeated, hiccuping around the word.

Yozora’s lips pursed as he let go, shrugging off his jacket in a hurry. He swung it over Sora’s shoulders, let it drape around him as a gust kicked up.

“That’s enough,” Yozora told him.

His voice was different, alive and present in a way that made Sora look twice at him. Something about him was breaking down as well. Sora wanted to apologize again, but the sound that came out of him wasn’t a word.

“Sora, that’s enough,” Yozora pressed on, the words quiet as they fell short of a demand.

He looked uncomfortable, like he’d put his shoes on the wrong feet.

Sora flinched and cried anew as Yozora reached for his face, eyes screwing shut as he blindly waited to be hit. But Yozora’s hands gentled as they held his face, cradled it between the palms of his gloves, the leather smooth and cool against his overheated skin.

“I’ll tell you again,” Yozora relented.

He thumbed one fat tear from Sora’s cheek, then another. The task was Sisyphean in nature, yet he persisted, nails occasionally catching the edge of an eyelash or the tail end of a brow. By the time Sora was ready to look at him again, his field of vision was narrowed and bleary, his lower lids tear-swollen.

Yozora sighed, his breath tasteless as Sora inhaled with a weak shiver. There was a silver filling that flashed in the back of his mouth, becoming indistinct from the rest of his teeth as he leaned in too close for Sora to focus on it.

He continued to hold Sora’s face, drawing him in close, head tipped forward as their foreheads came to rest together. When he licked his lips before speaking, Sora could nearly feel it against his own.

Yozora told Sora not what he wanted to hear, but what he asked to hear. What he had to say was frightening and complex, filled with places and names Sora hadn’t heard of and ones he had. Yozora never stumbled over his words, but stopped short at times, picking carefully at his words during the moments that Sora’s tears sprang up and his breath turned thin as thread.

The details grew broad and stretched, disconnected from anything Sora recognized. His attention drifted to Yozora’s voice during those times, tone curbed of any bite, words hushed as if he thought this of all things would be what comforted Sora.

He was right.

The heat drained out of Sora as Yozora spoke, the sobs that rose up now able to be swallowed. And while his sinuses crackled with each sniff, Yozora could now keep pace with the speed of Sora’s tears.

Sora became drowsy with the comedone of his episode as Yozora finished speaking. The words were in his head now, vaguely coordinated but not cohesive.

“Do you understand now?” Yozora asked.

“Some of it,” Sora said.

 _Not enough of it_ , he thought.

Sora listened to Yozora swallow, his grip tightening for a moment as he tilted his head to the side. The bridge of his nose rested against Sora’s.

“I’m going to finish now,” Yozora said.

The words were murmured against Sora’s lips, spoken through a semblance of a kiss.

“Okay,” Sora said. “But it's cold, whatever it is you do. So make it fast.”

He wished they could talk a little longer, a little closer. 

“I do, every time.”

The cold was swift and terrible. It bloomed at his feet and raced in tendrils up his legs. It took his blood and slowed it, stilled it, made his heart frantic as it pumped and pumped and _pumped_ with nothing left to move. The cold settled there next, took the frenzied rhythm and gripped it as his pulse was reduced to a far-off thing.

Yozora kissed him all the while.

His lips were chapped at the corners as they worked against Sora’s, waxy with balm that didn’t quite smooth them. It tasted medicated and sharp, a camphor and menthol mix that stuck with Sora as Yozora’s tongue traced over each kiss he left.

It gave Sora a certain warmth, a last burst of life to hold onto while the rest of him shut down. He tried to remember how it felt in those final seconds, raked it through his mind and fought to make it a new groove, deeper and wider than the last.

**Author's Note:**

> It's like Sleeping Beauty but true love's kiss does the opposite.
> 
> In my heart, there is still a fluffy follow-up. Skip battle, do not collect $200, go directly to comforting and smooching.


End file.
